I have a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S8+ bought and paid for in full from Samsung.com and went through the major hassle of getting a Samsung sold T-Mobile device unlocked which is not able to unlocked without major support from Twitter. That aside, I broke my phone and had it replaced with a refurbished (100% new looking, perfect condition) though Samsung Premium Care which is run through Assurant. 2 months later it stopped working on the network, no calls/text/data. Called in and they were able to get it working again. I decided to check the IMEI number on T-Mobile's checker site, and it came back as "This device has an outstanding balance that must be paid or it may not be able to be used on T-Mobile network." Went back and forth with Twitter support for a few months with no resolution, promises of Tickets being submitted to their offline team as at the time it seemed to them that it was bug in the website, that there was no EIP due on it.

Gave up after a few weeks of nothing being done, but then tried again a month or so again. After a 2 week back and forth every day, submitting any and all documentation from Assurant (biggest issue being there was documentation of the broken IMEI, but they could not provide any paperwork with the replacement IMEI number). Eventually I got someone who must have had access to a different set of systems as they were seeing there indeed WAS some sort of EIP information from the previous owner linked to my new devices IMEI, and were even able to see that they returned the phone to T-Mobile under a warranty exchange and it was financed under an EIP. Now here's where things get cloudy, T-Mobile and Samsung insurance both use Assurant, but they are run as two completely different business units and Samsung's side of Assurant does not have the same type of access as the T-Mobile division so it seems they were not able to completely remove the previous owners information linked to the device. I was all but ready to give up, as several offline tickets were made with no resolution, but then I got a great T-Force rep who was able to see the situation maybe in a way the others had not and completely the old owners info from the IMEI number in under 10 minutes. The IMEI checker website verified this as well as now no longer showed the "balance due" message.

So here are my questions regarding this:

Did Assurant not properly and fully remove the previous owners info/EIP?

Once an EIP is fully paid off and SIM unlocked is a customer's information still tied to the IMEI number forever?

If I break my phone and get another warranty replacement and the refurbished device was previously on an EIP will I run into this same situation?

How did this situation arise in the first place?

My main concern with this is being able to sell my phone in the future, I keep very good care of my phones (when I broke mine it was during the 2 minutes it was out of its case being cleaned), but anyone buying the phone and checking the IMEI number had the T-Force rep not wiped the previous owners info off would never buy a phone that shows it's still being financed and many phone selling websites like Swappa will check the IMEI and not even let you list if it has an EIP.

Has anyone else ever run into something like this before, or did my phone just happen to "fall through the cracks" so to speak?

All replies

Yikes j_steiner ! This whole things sounds like a real hassle but I'm glad T-Force was able to get this resolved. This isn't something that commonly happens so I'd say this is a one-off that slipped through the cracks. I can't speak for Assurant, but what I can say is that you shouldn't have received a phone that still had an EIP tied to it. As for customer info being tied to an IMEI, any EIP balance that's already been taken care of should impact the next user of the phone. We can use the IMEI to search the account to see if it was ever used by a phone number on that account, but other than that, the IMEI wouldn't carry any customer specific info from the previous owner. I don't believed you'd run into this again if you were to need another replacement phone.

Thanks for the info, it seemed like the EIP was wiped out, but some trace was left behind as normal phone support saw it as being free and clear of any EIP, but the IMEI checker on T-Mobiles site showed a balance due which would be a huge red flag in trying to sell my phone that I payed full price for. Could also have been I broke my Galaxy S8+ within 6 weeks of it's release so maybe they didn't have the fully correct way to clear the previous device owners info which may have just been on a back end system that the website checks.

It's hard to say exactly what it was, but it could have been an EIP on the back end somewhere in the system. It's not something that should happen, but at least T-Force was able to get this handled so at least it was traceable. The good thing is that this can be fixed for anyone else that may come across an issue like this.

Yea, they were able to fix it but being such an odd strange issue it took so long to get taken care of. At least with twitter you can chat when it's convenient, 2 weeks of constant back and forth on twitter, and countless reps I was all but ready to give up until "*CaseyN" fixed my issue in 10 minutes flat. If it would help create documentation to help anyone else who has this issue I still have the whole Twitter DM conversation on this issue, PM me if this would be of any help.

Yeah, that's a bummer it took that long but I am glad to hear Casey took care of you. I'll you a PM and pass along what happened to our internal folks so we can review our escalation process. Sorry again that this took some time but thank you for sharing your story.